I’am Albert Folch, creative director at Folch. Partner at White Horse (producer company) and Avanti (wayfinding company). Besides my profesional roles, I’m surfer and nature lover.
From the very beginning I was attracted to editorial design. My final project was the edition and design of a publication. My first assignment was an architecture publication and from there I started a very intense career, practically focused on editorial design, that led me to design many magazines and books and even co-found several mastheads. I honestly don't know if I always wanted to do this... let's say it was a design discipline that I found interesting and I explored it for a few years.
Approximately 12 years ago I was co-founder of the project Apartmento and a few years later of the publication Odiseo and the publishing project Eldorado.
Many publishing projects have passed through the studio, such as Metal magazine, Fucking Young, Fanzine137, and Dream, as well as many other publications and books. We have never depended on anyone. We have always financed our projects with our own resources. We have never depended on models associated with advertising.
My roles are much broader and more eclectic. I run several companies and we are involved in several other creative projects such as Acid House Barcelona and the Gallery Sessions music format. Publishing was a period in my professional life but for a few years now we have been completely digitised and our nature has changed. We have evolved into an agency model and have left behind the editorial design and design studio format.
Where did the idea for Eldorado come from? How did you bring it to life?
After a surf-trip to morocco, photographer Dizy Dias showed us everything he had generated on that trip. We saw something different in this look and we thought that we could conceptualise an editorial project around the look of the traveller and that way of travelling, more calm, more observant, less aggressive and consumerist. With a strong link to sport and nature and to the respect and enjoyment of it.
At the beginning, Eldorado was only a paper publishing house but after the publication of the first two fanzines we realised that Eldorado had to be reborn with a digital and multi-platform soul. My partner Rafa was key to creating this new look for the project and made us see that we could not continue to be slaves to paper and that it was best to digitise the publishing project.
